What REIT ETFs Actually Hold: SCHH Costs 0.07%, IYR 0.37%, and USRT and RWR Own No Cell Towers (Form N-PORT, 2026)
Quick Answer
The big US REIT ETFs hold almost the same companies, and the filings show three differences worth money: what is excluded, what is not a REIT, and what it costs. In each fund's latest Form N-PORT (report dates May 31 to July 31, 2026), Welltower and Prologis are the two largest holdings in all eight equity funds, at 8.5%-11.0% and 7.5%-9.2% of net assets. Towers and data centers (AMT, CCI, SBAC, EQIX, DLR) are 8.9% of RWR and 10.6% of USRT but 24.0% of ICF: USRT and RWR hold no American Tower, Crown Castle or SBA, because their indexes leave out infrastructure and tower REITs. Vanguard's VNQ ($73.1B for the whole fund, July 31, 2026) holds 14.50% of net assets in another Vanguard fund, Real Estate II, so 153 lines are about 140 issuers. Four funds put 5.3%-6.6% in companies whose 10-K has no REIT election (CBRE, JLL, CoStar, Zillow: VNQ, FREL, XLRE, IYR); SCHH, RWR, ICF and USRT hold none. From the summary prospectuses, total annual expenses run 0.07% (SCHH) to 0.37% (IYR); USRT costs 0.08% and overlaps IYR by 79.1 points of 100 (our arithmetic). A non-traded REIT such as BREIT ($56.6B NAV, June 30, 2026) charges 1.25% of NAV plus 12.5% of total return over a 5% hurdle, and holds 42% rental housing, 27% data centers and 20% industrial.
Key Takeaways
- Welltower is the largest line in all eight equity REIT ETFs (8.45% in ICF to 11.01% in XLRE) and Prologis the second (7.49% in USRT to 9.15% in RWR). VNQ's own table shows its Vanguard fund line first, so we looked through it (our arithmetic).
- VNQ's N-PORT (July 31, 2026, accession 0000734383-26-000299) has one line, Vanguard Real Estate II Index Fund, at 14.50% of net assets. Looking through it, VNQ's top 10 are 49.9% rather than 54.9%, and it is nearly a copy of FREL: 96.2 points of overlap (our arithmetic).
- Towers and data centers (AMT, CCI, SBAC, EQIX, DLR): ICF 24.0%, XLRE 22.2%, VNQ 18.2%, SCHH 17.9%, IYR 16.6%, FREL 16.6%, USRT 10.6%, RWR 8.9%. USRT holds Equinix and Digital Realty but no tower company, and RWR the same.
- Counting only what each company's 10-K says it does, residential is 10.0%-17.5% and industrial 8.7%-13.3% of the eight equity funds, office just 1.0%-4.1%. If Welltower, which describes itself as “rental housing for aging seniors”, were counted as residential, residential would be 19.9%-26.3% (our arithmetic).
- VNQ (6.3% look-through), FREL (6.6%), XLRE (5.3%) and IYR (5.3%) hold real estate service and listing companies that are not REITs. IYR also holds 2.9% in mortgage REITs (Annaly, AGNC, Rithm, Starwood Property).
- Costs from each summary prospectus: SCHH 0.07%, USRT 0.08%, XLRE 0.08%, FREL 0.084%, VNQ 0.13%, RWR 0.25%, ICF 0.32%, IYR 0.37%, REM 0.48%. On $10,000, that is $7 against $37 a year (our arithmetic).
- Against a non-traded REIT: BREIT charges 1.25% of NAV a year plus 12.5% of annual total return over a 5% hurdle, and its quarterly repurchase cap is 5% of aggregate NAV. A REIT ETF trades every day.
- Report dates differ by fund: SCHH May 31, 2026; XLRE, IYR, RWR and REM June 30, 2026; VNQ, USRT, FREL and ICF July 31, 2026. Weights are as filed, not today's.
CSV · 250 rows
REIT ETFs, 2026: size, holdings, top lines, sector mix, towers and data centers, costs, and a non-traded REIT comparison
250 rows: nine ETFs' latest Form N-PORT (net assets, lines, top 10, three largest lines), weights in AMT, CCI, SBAC, EQIX and DLR, our sector mix, total expenses and index from each summary prospectus, VNQ look-through, five overlaps, and BREIT's fee, sector mix and repurchase terms. Our ratios are marked.
What we read, and how we sorted the holdings
Every US ETF files Form N-PORT, a line-by-line list of what it owns with the value and the percentage of net assets of each line. We took the latest N-PORT on EDGAR for each fund (we scanned each registrant's filing list on October 7, 2026), plus the summary prospectus (Form 497K) for the cost and the index. For nine funds that makes: Vanguard Real Estate (VNQ), Schwab U.S. REIT (SCHH), Real Estate Select Sector SPDR (XLRE), iShares U.S. Real Estate (IYR), iShares Core U.S. REIT (USRT), SPDR Dow Jones REIT (RWR), Fidelity MSCI Real Estate (FREL), iShares Select U.S. REIT (ICF; its summary prospectus says it tracks the Cohen & Steers Realty Majors Index) and iShares Mortgage Real Estate (REM). We left out the global funds, because their holdings have no US 10-K.
An N-PORT does not say whether a holding is an apartment REIT or a tower REIT. So we classified each issuer ourselves, from the company's own Form 10-K, using this method:
- Map each N-PORT holding to its SEC filer (CIK) and fetch its latest 10-K (about 180 filers, saved in the sources folder).
- Put it in one category by what the 10-K says the company mainly owns or does: residential (apartments, single-family rental, manufactured housing), industrial, office, retail, net lease and diversified, health care and life science, self storage, lodging, other specialty (timber, billboards, gaming, cold storage, records, land), mortgage REITs, and not REITs (no REIT election language anywhere in the first 450,000 characters of the 10-K).
- Towers and data centers is a fixed list of five, as in the question we started from: American Tower (AMT), Crown Castle (CCI), SBA Communications (SBAC), Equinix (EQIX) and Digital Realty (DLR). Their 10-Ks describe them as, respectively, “multitenant communications real estate”, “shared communications infrastructure”, “wireless communications infrastructure”, a “digital infrastructure company” and a portfolio “including data centers and non-data centers”.
- Apply the category to each fund's weights. For VNQ we use a look-through (next section).
The list of issuers, categories and the 10-K sentence behind each is in sources/classification_by_issuer.csv. The categories are a judgment call at the edges, and every percentage on this page that uses them says “our arithmetic”. Two edges matter: Welltower (below) and Iron Mountain, which calls itself “a global leader in information management services” and which we put in other specialty.
One name changed during the window: EDGAR now shows the registrant that filed as Equity Residential as Vivmark Residential (the former name ends August 12, 2026). The N-PORT filings still print Equity Residential.
The ETFs side by side, ranked by cost
We rank by one stated metric: total annual fund operating expenses in the latest summary prospectus, lowest first. We do not rank on anything else.
| ETF | Total annual expenses (prospectus date) | Net assets (N-PORT date) | Lines (equity lines) | Top 10 lines | Index |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SCHH, Schwab U.S. REIT | 0.07% (Jun 26, 2026) | $9.98B (May 31, 2026) | 119 (117) | 49.7% | Dow Jones Equity All REIT Capped Index |
| USRT, iShares Core U.S. REIT | 0.08% (Aug 31, 2026) | $4.66B (Jul 31, 2026) | 126 (124) | 49.2% | FTSE Nareit Equity REITs 40 Act Capped Index |
| XLRE, Real Estate Select Sector SPDR | 0.08% (Jan 30, 2026) | $8.10B (Jun 30, 2026) | 34 (31) | 59.1% | Real Estate Select Sector Index |
| FREL, Fidelity MSCI Real Estate | 0.084% (Nov 29, 2025) | $1.49B (Jul 31, 2026) | 124 (122) | 47.5% | MSCI USA IMI Real Estate 25/25 Index |
| VNQ, Vanguard Real Estate | 0.13% (May 28, 2026) | $73.11B, whole fund (Jul 31, 2026) | 153 (141); about 140 issuers looking through | 54.9% as filed; 49.9% looking through | MSCI US Investable Market Real Estate 25/50 Index |
| RWR, SPDR Dow Jones REIT | 0.25% (Oct 31, 2025) | $1.84B (Jun 30, 2026) | 104 (99) | 51.4% | Dow Jones U.S. Select REIT Capped Index |
| ICF, iShares Select U.S. REIT | 0.32% (Aug 31, 2026) | $2.10B (Jul 31, 2026) | 32 (30) | 59.0% | Cohen & Steers Realty Majors Index |
| IYR, iShares U.S. Real Estate | 0.37% (Jul 31, 2026) | $4.67B (Jun 30, 2026) | 64 (61) | 51.2% | Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate Capped Index |
| REM, iShares Mortgage Real Estate | 0.48% (Jul 31, 2026) | $0.55B (Jun 30, 2026) | 35 (31) | 71.9% | FTSE Nareit All Mortgage Capped Index |
“Lines” are all Part C holdings in the N-PORT, including cash funds and derivatives; “equity lines” are the stocks. Top 10 is the sum of the ten largest lines as filed (our arithmetic). Three things stand out.
- Size and number of holdings do not line up. XLRE has $8.10B in 34 lines, with 59.1% in its top 10; FREL has $1.49B in 124 lines, with 47.5%.
- VNQ's $73.1B is the whole Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund, not only the ETF. The prospectus calls VNQ “an exchange-traded share class of Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund”, and the N-PORT is filed for the fund. The ETF shares' own size is not in the filing.
- The cost spread is 5.3 to 1 between SCHH and IYR (0.37 divided by 0.07, our arithmetic), and 4.6 to 1 between USRT and IYR, for funds that overlap by 79.1 points (below). XLRE's 0.08% includes a 0.02% distribution and service (12b-1) fee.
Sector mix: what is in the eight equity funds
The table applies our classification to each fund's weights. All figures are percentages of net assets as filed, and are our arithmetic.
| ETF | Towers + data centers (AMT, CCI, SBAC, EQIX, DLR) | Residential | Industrial | Office | Health care and life science | Retail | Not REITs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SCHH | 17.9% | 11.6% | 12.1% | 2.8% | 17.9% | 10.2% | 0.0% |
| USRT | 10.6% | 13.7% | 11.3% | 3.7% | 19.4% | 11.7% | 0.1% |
| XLRE | 22.2% | 12.9% | 8.7% | 1.0% | 17.9% | 9.1% | 5.3% |
| FREL | 16.6% | 10.8% | 10.9% | 2.9% | 16.9% | 10.2% | 6.6% |
| VNQ (looking through) | 18.2% | 10.0% | 11.1% | 2.7% | 17.6% | 9.7% | 6.3% |
| RWR | 8.9% | 15.8% | 13.3% | 4.1% | 21.7% | 12.4% | 0.0% |
| ICF | 24.0% | 17.5% | 9.5% | 1.5% | 12.8% | 11.4% | 0.0% |
| IYR | 16.6% | 11.9% | 11.2% | 1.8% | 17.6% | 8.4% | 5.3% |
The remaining weight is net lease and diversified (4.4%-9.5%), self storage (5.8%-8.6%), lodging (1.1%-4.0%), other specialty such as timber, billboards, gaming and records storage (1.0%-10.1%), and, in IYR only, mortgage REITs (2.9%). REM is 98.0% mortgage REITs and is not in the table.
Two readings of this table.
Office is almost absent. In none of the eight is office more than 4.1% of net assets (RWR), and in XLRE it is 1.0%. Welltower, Prologis and the tower and data center names take the room.
Welltower decides what “residential” means. It is the largest line in every fund, and its 10-K says it is “focusing on rental housing for aging seniors”. We count it as health care. A reader who sees senior housing as housing would add 8.5-11.0 points to residential: 19.9% (FREL) to 26.3% (RWR) (our arithmetic). Neither reading is wrong, and the choice moves residential by more than the difference between most of these funds.
VNQ: 14.5% sits inside another Vanguard fund
VNQ's table is the odd one. Its largest line is not a company. It is Vanguard Real Estate II Index Fund at 14.50% of net assets, a registered fund that Vanguard's own prospectus describes: the fund holds the index stocks “either directly or indirectly through a wholly owned subsidiary”, and “The Underlying Real Estate Fund is a registered investment company.” Real Estate II has its own N-PORT (accession 0000106444-26-000505, July 31, 2026) with $10.97B of net assets and 145 lines. VNQ's stake of 14.5% of $73.1B is about 96.7% of it (our arithmetic).
To see what VNQ holds, we added the Real Estate II lines, scaled by 14.50%, to VNQ's direct lines. The result for the top 10:
| Holding | VNQ as filed | VNQ looking through (our arithmetic) |
|---|---|---|
| Vanguard Real Estate II Index Fund | 14.50% | (spread across the lines below) |
| Welltower | 8.51% | 9.97% |
| Prologis | 7.01% | 8.20% |
| Equinix | 5.23% | 6.12% |
| American Tower | 4.20% | 4.92% |
| Simon Property Group | 3.88% | 4.53% |
| Digital Realty | 3.37% | 3.94% |
| Realty Income | 3.08% | 3.60% |
| Public Storage | 2.83% | 3.26% |
| Ventas | 2.31% | 2.71% |
| CBRE Group | 2.25% (direct) | 2.64% |
| Top 10 combined | 54.9% | 49.9% |
Looking through, VNQ is nearly a copy of FREL: the sum of the smaller weight of each shared issuer is 96.2 points out of 100 (our arithmetic), against 90.8 for VNQ and SCHH. The two track nearly the same index family (MSCI USA IMI Real Estate 25/25 for FREL, MSCI US Investable Market Real Estate 25/50 for VNQ). The prospectus states the Vanguard index includes “real estate management and development companies” alongside REITs, which is where the non-REIT weight comes from.
Towers and data centers: USRT and RWR have none of the towers
The question “how much of this fund is cell towers and data centers” has a different answer in every fund, because the indexes define “REIT” differently. This table shows the weight of each of the five in each fund (0.00% means the company is not in the filing).
| ETF | AMT | CCI | SBAC | EQIX | DLR | Five combined |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ICF | 6.95% | 3.28% | 2.07% | 7.35% | 4.35% | 24.0% |
| XLRE | 5.24% | 3.42% | 1.94% | 7.06% | 4.53% | 22.2% |
| VNQ (looking through) | 4.92% | 2.02% | 1.17% | 6.12% | 3.94% | 18.2% |
| SCHH | 4.34% | 2.82% | 1.53% | 4.88% | 4.35% | 17.9% |
| IYR | 3.85% | 2.44% | 1.38% | 4.55% | 4.38% | 16.6% |
| FREL | 4.10% | 2.09% | 1.24% | 5.24% | 3.95% | 16.6% |
| USRT | 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% | 6.01% | 4.56% | 10.6% |
| RWR | 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% | 4.45% | 4.40% | 8.9% |
The prospectuses say why. USRT's index measures US-listed equity REITs, “excluding infrastructure REITs, mortgage REITs, and timber REITs”. RWR's index leaves out companies classified as specialty, “including timber REITs, railroad REITs and tower REITs”. Equinix and Digital Realty stay in both because their indexes class them differently from the towers. If you buy USRT or RWR and think you own “the cell tower and data center boom”, you own the data center half only.
Not everything inside a REIT ETF is a REIT
Four funds hold companies that do not elect REIT status, which our check found by looking for REIT election language in each 10-K. In VNQ (looking through), XLRE, FREL and IYR the non-REIT weight is 6.3%, 5.3%, 6.6% and 5.3%. The largest names are CBRE Group (4.08% of XLRE; 2.64% of VNQ looking through; 2.91% of IYR), Jones Lang LaSalle, CoStar Group (1.20% of XLRE), Compass, Zillow and Opendoor. They are real estate service, listing and brokerage companies, not owners that pay REIT dividends.
SCHH, RWR and ICF hold none of them, and USRT held 0.11% in one company (Janus Living) that has no 10-K on file yet, so we left it unclassified. The funds' own descriptions show the choice. Vanguard says the “GICS real estate sector” is made of REITs “and real estate management and development companies”. IYR's index measures “the real estate sector of the U.S. equity market”. USRT's measures US-listed equity REITs.
IYR is also the only equity fund with mortgage REITs: Annaly (1.21%), AGNC (0.92%), Starwood Property Trust (0.42%) and Rithm Capital (0.39%) add up to 2.9% (our arithmetic). For a fund that is all mortgage REITs, REM holds 98.0%, with Annaly at 22.77% and AGNC at 15.32%.
How alike are they
The sum of the smaller weight of each issuer two funds share is a simple measure of overlap (our arithmetic; 100 would mean identical).
| Pair | Overlap (points of 100) | Cost gap (total annual expenses) |
|---|---|---|
| VNQ and FREL | 96.2 | 0.13% against 0.084% |
| VNQ and SCHH | 90.8 | 0.13% against 0.07% |
| IYR and USRT | 79.1 | 0.37% against 0.08% |
| USRT and RWR | 88.3 | 0.08% against 0.25% |
| XLRE and ICF | 84.6 | 0.08% against 0.32% |
| XLRE and RWR | 68.4 | 0.08% against 0.25% |
The funds that look most alike on a screen (VNQ and FREL) are 96% the same. The least alike are the concentrated ones (ICF, XLRE) against the broad ones that exclude towers (RWR). Overlap tells you what you duplicate when you hold two of them. It does not say which is better.
A non-traded REIT next to these ETFs
For a reader choosing between a REIT ETF and a non-traded REIT, the same kind of filing gives a direct comparison. Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT), in its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (accession 0001662972-26-000111), reports the following. The sector split is by fair value of its real estate and the ETF split is by net assets, so they are not the same base.
| REIT ETFs (this page) | BREIT (Form 10-Q, June 30, 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| What you own | Shares of 30 to 140 listed companies, priced all day | 4,530 properties and 63,081 single-family rental homes, owned in whole or in part, valued by the sponsor |
| Size | $0.55B (REM) to $73.1B (VNQ whole fund) | $56.6B net asset value |
| Fee | 0.07% to 0.37% of assets (equity funds, summary prospectuses) | 1.25% of NAV a year (standard classes) plus 12.5% of annual total return over a 5% hurdle |
| Getting out | Sell on any trading day | Up to 2% of aggregate NAV a month and “no more than 5% of our aggregate NAV per calendar quarter”; $2.1B repurchased in the first six months of 2026, all requests satisfied |
| Residential | 10.0% to 17.5% of net assets | 42% of real estate by fair value (rental housing) |
| Data centers (and towers for the ETFs) | 8.9% to 24.0% (includes towers) | 27% (data centers) |
| Industrial | 8.7% to 13.3% | 20% |
On $100,000, the stated management fee is $70 a year in SCHH against $1,250 in BREIT's standard classes (our arithmetic), before BREIT's performance participation and any stockholder servicing fee. The filing reports $243.1M of performance participation allocation expense for the three months to June 30, 2026. We compare the two structures, including the discount that listed REITs have traded at against their NAV, in non-traded REIT vs publicly-traded REIT, look at four institutional NAV REITs in Blue Owl, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Apollo compared, and track gating in the NAV REIT redemption status. Our BREIT review has the fund's own history.
What a reader can do with this
- Check which index you are buying. The ticker does not say whether towers are in. USRT and RWR leave them out, ICF is the most concentrated in them (24.0%).
- Look at the cost line in the prospectus, not the fund name. The same sector costs 0.07% to 0.37% a year. On $10,000 that is $7 to $37, or $70 to $370 on $100,000 (our arithmetic).
- Read the next N-PORT. Each fund's next quarter-end report shows how the weights moved. The tower and data center share and the non-REIT share are the two numbers that move the story.
- If you are weighing a non-traded REIT, put its fee, its sector mix and its repurchase cap beside the ETF as above. Fundrise vs REITs does the same for a crowdfunding platform.
This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice. We do not recommend any fund.
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Sources: SEC EDGAR, retrieved October 7, 2026. Form N-PORT (report date; filing accession): Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund (VNQ) July 31, 2026, 0000734383-26-000299; Vanguard Real Estate II Index Fund July 31, 2026, 0000106444-26-000505; Schwab U.S. REIT ETF (SCHH) May 31, 2026, 0001410368-26-075043; Real Estate Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLRE) June 30, 2026, 0001410368-26-089191; iShares U.S. Real Estate ETF (IYR) June 30, 2026, 0001004726-26-007029; iShares Core U.S. REIT ETF (USRT) July 31, 2026, 0000940400-26-038481; SPDR Dow Jones REIT ETF (RWR) June 30, 2026, 0001410368-26-089641; Fidelity MSCI Real Estate Index ETF (FREL) July 31, 2026, 0001410368-26-097239; iShares Select U.S. REIT ETF (ICF) July 31, 2026, 0002071691-26-023068; iShares Mortgage Real Estate ETF (REM) June 30, 2026, 0000940400-26-035013. Summary prospectuses (Form 497K): VNQ 0000734383-26-000136; SCHH 0000884546-26-000300; XLRE 0001193125-26-031733; IYR 0001193125-26-327926; USRT 0001193125-26-375933; RWR 0001193125-25-256777; FREL 0000945908-25-000731; ICF 0001193125-26-375932; REM 0001193125-26-327957. BREIT Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, 0001662972-26-000111. Issuer descriptions: latest Form 10-K of each holdings filer, saved in the sources folder, and the SEC submissions record for CIK 906107. Sector percentages, look-through weights, overlaps, top 10 sums and the classification are our arithmetic on those filings (sources/our_arithmetic_reit_etf.txt and sources/classification_by_issuer.csv). This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.
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